Gas powered guns are used for example in the sport known as Paintball in which spherical projectiles containing coloured liquid are fired at an opponent and burst upon hitting the opponent so that the coloured liquid is deposited on the opponent. The spherical projectile is propelled from the gun by a pressurized gas, usually carbon dioxide or compressed air, which is supplied from a small cylinder attached to the gun.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,613,483 (Lukas et al.) issued Mar. 25, 1997 describes a firing gas control mechanism which controls the burst of gas which fires a projectile from the barrel of the gun. The mechanism taught by Lukas et al. includes a cylinder containing a piston rod slideably moveable between a loading position in which the leading end of the piston rod is sufficiently withdrawn in the barrel to permit a projectile to be fed into the barrel through an opening in the side thereof, and a firing position in which the piston rod has moved forwardly to cause the leading end of the piston rod to engage the projectile and move the projectile forwardly in the barrel, whereupon a burst of gas propels the projectile from the barrel. The contents of the Lukas et al. patent are hereby incorporated herein by reference.
It has been found, that with the Lukas et al. mechanism, the piston rod cannot be made to recycle quickly enough to provide the required modern day firing rate without pneumatically unbalancing the piston to cause a faster forward motion and a slower back motion and without the likelihood of the mechanism being jammed by a projectile being fed into the barrel prior to firing.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a gas powered gun with a firing gas control system which can operate in a faster manner than the firing gas control mechanism described in the above-mentioned patent.